


the coffee-table dilemma

by chronicallytiredofyourshit



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, bathtime!Nicola
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29047752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicallytiredofyourshit/pseuds/chronicallytiredofyourshit
Summary: Malcolm struggles to come to terms with the fact he has emotions other than anger.
Relationships: Nicola Murray/Malcolm Tucker
Comments: 17
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Both very grateful and incredibly frustrated at everyone who put the idea of coffee-table-angst in my head.

_You are on a beach. The sun is setting and the shadows of the palm trees are surrounding you. You close your eyes and begin inhaling and exhaling deeply, focusing on the falling and rising of your chest._

Nicola breathed in the steamy air and slipped further into the water, resting her head on the edge of the bath. She was still trying to stamp out the irritation bubbling away at the pit of her stomach, gnawing at her chest; it made her want to ram knitting needles into her eye sockets.

She knew an argument was brewing the moment Malcolm walked through the door, when he had muttered something about how it was a pisstake that he didn’t have a key and had to stand in the rain until she let him in. He then started clattering around the kitchen, hissing something or other about pasta and Nicola decided it was best to leave it be and go into the living room. This, she soon found out, was very clearly a mistake because just as soon as she had sat down and turned on the television he came in yelling like a madman.

She had found out pretty much immediately after meeting him that the strength of Malcolm’s accent was dependent on the exact level of rage he was feeling. So when he suddenly appeared in front of her, gesticulating wildly, with an accent so strong she literally had no idea what he was saying, she was more than a little concerned. The only words she could make out - because he kept repeating them over and over - were  _coffee table_.  She didn’t even have a fucking coffee table!

Nicola, however, didn’t give herself much time to figure out what he was so angry about before she found herself getting defensive, jumping up from her seat and telling him to fuck off back to Scotland.

She was aware she didn’t have quite a (staggeringly violent) way with words as Malcolm did and whilst he was still practically foaming at the mouth as the expletives streamed out of him, Nicola realised she had exhausted all the insults she could think of and decided to just give him the finger and stomp upstairs.

It was only when she stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door so hard the floor shook that she realised she probably should’ve stormed into the bedroom. However, it would’ve looked rather pathetic if she then shuffled ashamedly down the hallway so, with a resigned sigh, she muttered something to herself about Malcolm being Russell Crowe and turned on the faucet.

_You listen carefully to sound of the waves approaching and feel the sand settling beneath you as you lay by the shore._

Nicola heard three hard knocks against the bathroom door and quickly chose to ignore it. The bathroom was her safe place, her sanctuary. It was the one place in her house she didn’t feel totally out-of-place after her divorce. She had only positive memories of it (the first to come to mind being one Saturday night when the kids had gone to their fathers and Malcolm had come round and gotten _very_ creative with the detachable shower head) so the last thing she needed was to have a blazing row during a fucking bubble bath. As it persisted, she let out an exasperated groan and crossed her arms, closing her eyes as she sunk deeper into the water until it was just below her chin.She kept her eyes shut as she heard the door opening and felt a rush of cold air entering the bathroom, bringing goosebumps across her cheeks.

_ As the beach is slowly encompassed in darkness, you feel the soft, cooling wind filtering through the palm tr- _

There was a soft click as Malcolm turned off the CD player.  
“I wish you’d stop listening to that shite.” “You’re in no position to be making demands of me!” Nicola grumbled, not opening her eyes for a second.  
She could feel him hovering over and she knew exactly how he’d be looking down at her, with his hands on his hips and that smug raised eyebrow she just wanted to wax off.

“Dinner’s downstairs.”  
Nicola didn’t answer, partially because she was too busy suppressing a shiver creeping up her spine as the water cooled.  
“I said dinner’s downstairs,” Malcolm repeated, his voice sterner.  
Again, Nicola remained silent and made a point of screwing her eyes shut as tight as she could, wrinkling her nose.  
“Oh wow, Nic’la, very fuckin’ mature. The silent treatment, eh? Nutty fuckin’ cow.”

She couldn’t help herself; Nicola scoffed in disbelief and raised herself in the water to look at Malcolm.  
“You know you don’t live here, right?!” She spoke incredulously, her irrepressible smirk betraying the anger emanating through her, “If you’re that fucking furious about... whatever this is then you can stop cooking in my kitchen and fuck off back home!”

Malcolm stood completely still for a moment in the doorway for just a second, his Adam’s apple bobbing before he rolled his eyes and retreated to the hallway, slamming the door as he left.

Nicola gritted her teeth and balled her hands into fists, letting out a incensed growl. Falling back into the water like a defiant child, she closed her eyes once more and imagined she was on a beach far, far away where no man could disturb her fucking peace ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

Nicola loved Malcolm, and although it was unspoken at this stage in their relationship she was pretty sure he knew that. She was also at least 75% certain (although on a more anxious day it could be as low as 30) that he loved her back. Despite this, Nicola couldn’t help but fantasise about kicking him right in the cock as she climbed out of the bath and pulled on her dressing gown.

She thought briefly about the pasta Malcolm had told her was waiting downstairs but her excitement was soon quashed when she realised he had probably binned it as he left, just to be a complete and utter arsehole. That was one of the few traits he had hung onto after leaving politics - his underhandedness. Whilst Nicola was far too wound up to be going to sleep anytime soon, she was also too tired to dry and brush out her hair (something she knew from experience she’d regret in the morning) so she ignored the water dripping onto the floor and resigned herself to lying in bed and watching a shitty drama until she fell asleep.

Arguments with Malcolm tended to go one of two ways; they would both scream and shout until they eventually forgot what made them so angry in the first place and one of them (usually Malcolm) apologised. Alternatively, there would be a long day or two of snide remarks and the silent treatment and going back to their respective homes until they finally calmed down. It was usually quite hard to predict which way things would go; however, from the moment Nicola walked into her bedroom to see Malcolm leant against the pillows, reading from the kindle he had mocked her for weeks for owning, and she couldn’t help but let out a quietly hissed ‘oh for fucks sake’ it quickly became apparent it was likely to be the former.

“Don’t you ‘oh for fucks sake’ me!” Malcolm growled as he chucked the kindle onto the bedside table, followed by his reading glasses, “I should be the one doing the ‘oh for fucks sake’!”  
Nicola rolled her eyes and chuckled, mostly because she knew just how much it would irritate him. She reached into the dresser to grab her moisturiser before sitting at her side of the bed, as close to the edge as she possibly could.  
“I don’t even know what you’re so pissed off about! You’re the one who had a bad day at work and started taking it out on me, like a wanker!”  
  
Nicola sat with one leg laid out in front of her, the other tucked under herself. She could feel Malcolm seething beside her but refused to look up from her calves as she squeezed the bottle into her hand and started to cover her leg with cream in quick, upward strokes.  
”Work has fuck all to do with this! You know, I thought your lack of basic fuckin’ comprehension skills had improved since you were leader but obviously not!”  
Nicola let out a groan and angrily kicked out her other leg, continuing her ministrations.  
She hated it when he brought up that time in their lives and he knew it. She felt so far removed from it all, they weren’t the same people they were then. It just didn’t make sense anymore.

“Okay then,” she spat out, carefully shifting her dressing gown to expose her thighs, “explain to me what has gotten you this angry on a Friday night.”  
She could see him out of the corner of her eye, looking anywhere other than at her, his arms crossed across his chest. A part of her was incredibly smug that even mid-raging-argument she could do this to him. Well, her legs could.  
“I don’t have a key to your house, even though I practically fuckin’ live here,” he exclaimed, “I’m not a... a fucking gigolo!”  
“A gig- oh never mind! Then you can have a key, we’ll go out and get another one cut tomorrow! I don’t know why you’re so intent on having a row rather than just telling me what you want.”  
“I shouldn’t have to tell you!” Malcolm yelled, the bed shifting as he turned to face her and pointed an accusatory finger at her, “I moved my fuckin’ coffee table, you never asked but I did!”

Nicola’s eyes nearly popped out of her head as she looked at Malcolm, an expression of both pure confusion and absolute anger on her face.  
“What are you talking about, Malcolm? You moved your coffee table? What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?”  
Malcolm seemed somewhat taken by surprise, but not at all disarmed or calm, as he released his hands from his chest to wave them in the air dramatically, yet again.  
”See, you don’t even notice! Two weeks ago, you were watching that shite soap and your feet couldn’t reach the coffee table, so I moved it! It looks fuckin’ ridiculous, off-centre as fuck, and I’m always tripping over it like a mentally-challenged foal but I did it FOR YOU!”

An uneasy silence filled the room and Nicola was sure Malcolm must’ve been able to hear her heartbeat as he jumped up to stand at the side of the bed. She had once laughed at the fact that he didn’t just want the moral high ground, but the physical one too. But in this moment, it just gets on her tits.  
“Okay, give me a second. So, you moved your coffee table for me, whatever that means, and now you’re upset because you feel... like a gigolo?”  
Nicola sat in silence as Malcolm shuffled in his feet for only a moment before quickly sitting at the bottom of the bed, his hand resting dangerously close to her legs.  
”I bought olives, Nic’la,” he spoke quietly, as though it were a shocking indictment, “fuckin’ olives. I hate them.”   
She knew he wanted to follow with the words _but you love them_. However, he settled for just a half-hearted shrug.

She let out an exaggerated sigh as she leant further into the copious pillows behind her. Often she had to take a moment to absorb whatever nonsense Malcolm was saying and, after careful consideration, it usually ended up making a lot of sense.  
“Okay, okay. I get it, this is difficult. I mean I - of all people - know just how weird this is. I was with one man for twenty years and all of a sudden I’m entirely obsessed with someone who I’m pretty sure bleeds sulphur. But I still don’t understand exactly what the problem is.”Malcolm’s chest shook briefly with silent laughter and at some point his hand had come to rest on her ankle, his thumb circling around the joint.  
“I just don’t know how we fit together, where we fit together. I feel like a spotty teenager asking a lass to be my new special friend. I just - are we, y’know, we’re serious right?”  
It was Nicola’s turn to laugh at his absurdity.“Oh, piss off! I can’t believe you just asked me that, ‘are we serious’ - you spent ten minutes last night strumming the stretch marks on my leg and pretending you were playing the guitar! That isn’t something one does in a casual relationship.”

Malcolm simply nodded quietly and Nicola focused on the delicate movements of his fingers against her toes.  
“If you’re going to keep fiddling around down there you could at least be useful,” she said with both sharpness and warmth in her voice as she handed him the bottle from the bedside.  
“I promise to get you a key if you promise to stop acting like an absolute nutter. We’re serious, Malcolm, and that means you need to talk to me. Not just lose your mind. I don’t want you to feel like a gigolo.”  
He smiled as he gently rubbed the cream into her feet. He had once asked her if she had some sort of condition and told her that they were far too small, that they looked too frail in his hands, ‘like daisies’, he had said. At the time, Nicola had chosen to quietly lay back and accept it as the backwards Malcolm-style compliment it was, rather than comment on the fact he was getting rather soft and poetic in his old age.  
“I promise not to act like a nutcase as long as you promise not to tell anyone you’ve made me go all... mushy.”  
“I promise not to tell anyone. Except Sam. And probably Katie. Oh, and definitely your sister.”


End file.
